In this hot encounter, “the Erle of <g>Pembroke</g> behaved himselfe like a hardy knight, and an expert capitaine; but hys brother, Syr Richard Herbert, so valyauntly acquited himselfe, that with his poll-axe in his hand, as his enemies did afterwards report, he twice by fair force passed thorough the battaile of his adversaries, and without any mortal wound returned. If everye one of his felowes and companions in arms had done but halfe the actes which he that daye by his noble prowess achieved, the Northerne men had obteyned neither safetie nor victorie.”
The chronicler then relates the circumstance which threw the Welshmen into a panic, by which they lost five thousand men, and then records the result with touching simplicity:--
“The Erle of Pembroke, <g>Sir Richard Herbert</g>,[203] his brother, and divers were taken, and brought to Banbery to be behedded. Much lamentacion and no lesse entreatie was made to save the lyfe of Syr Richard, both for hys goodlye personage, which excelled all men there, and also for the noble chivalrie that he had shewed in the fielde the day of the battaile; insomuch that his brother, the Erle, when he should lay downe his head on the blocke to suffer, says to Sir John Conyers and Clapham--‘_Maisters, let me die! for I am old; but save my brother, which is yung, lustie, and hardie, mete and fit to serve the greatest prince of Christendome._’
“But Coniers and Clapham remembering the death of the yung knight, Syr Henry <g>Nevill</g>, cosyn to the Erle of Warwicke, could not hear on that syde; but caused the Erle and his brother, with divers other gentlemen to the number often, to be there behedded.”[204]
<g>William</g>, eldest son of this unfortunate nobleman, succeeded to the earldom of Pembroke, and was retained by the king to serve him in his wars of France and Normandy for one whole year, with forty men-at-arms and two hundred archers. But the king, being desirous to dignify his son Prince Edward with the title of Earl of Pembroke, procured a resignation of the same from this William, and in lieu thereof created him Earl of <g>Huntingdon</g>, on the fourth of July, 1479. Four years later he was constituted, by Richard III., Justice of South Wales, and entered into covenants with the king to take Dame Catharine Plantagenet, his daughter, to wife, before the feast of <g>St. Michael</g> following; as also to make her a jointure in lands to the value of two hundred pounds per annum: the king undertaking to settle upon them and their heirs male, lands and lordships of a thousand marks per annum. But this lady dying in her tender years, it is likely that this marriage did not take effect. He afterwards wedded Mary, the fifth sister of <g>Woodville</g>, Earl Rivers, by whom he had an only daughter, at whose marriage with Sir Charles Somerset, the Castle of <g>Raglan</g>, and its dependencies, passed into the family of Worcester.